It is increasingly common for a number of work stations to share a printer by means of a network. The shared printer or printers may be an appreciable distance from some work stations. Although high speed printers will generally be preferred for such shared situations, there will often be a substantial delay between the moment when a job is submitted for printing, and the moment when it is in fact available for collection. This situation leaves users with a choice of going early to fetch their completed print job and running the risk that the job is not in fact complete, so that the trip is wasted, or of waiting a long time, thereby interrupting the activity to which the print job is related and increasing the chance of the print job being misplaced whilst waiting for collection, and even being read by parties for whom it is not intended. A number of partial solutions to this set of problems have been proposed. Another issue is that a user may be confronted with a large number of different print jobs that have been printed recently, amongst which he must locate his own print job. A known partial solution to this problem is for the system to automatically add a cover page to each print job hardcopy identifying the user associated therewith, so that print jobs can be easily identified and distributed. A drawback of this approach is that it results in a large number of extra pages being printed, which are generally discarded as soon as the completed print job is recovered. A still further problem is that during the indeterminate period between a document being printed, and being recovered by the appropriate user, there is an opportunity for the document to be misplaced, or even misappropriated. It is possible for the user who requested the print to fail to recover the document within an appropriate time frame, or even to forget the document entirely.
The Patent application JP 2006103283 A2 entitled “Printing System” relates to a printing system for detecting a state that printed material is left in the paper discharge tray for a long time and can notify a user of the same. The system of patent publication uses RFID tag and RFID tag reading means for detecting printed material in paper discharge tray. The system of this publication comprises a RFID reading/writing part. At the time of the printing, the RFID reading writing part writes user identification information on a RFID tag of a printing paper supplied to the system. The user identification information can be used to identify a user who requests printing. After the completion of the printing, an RFID reading part monitors the printed material. If the printed material is detected by RFID reading part to be in the paper discharge tray after a predetermined interval of time, the user is sent a notification.
An obvious disadvantage of this approach is its dependence on the integration of RFID tags in standard print stock. Furthermore, it does not provide any teaching relevant to the issue of waste cover pages.
The Patent application JP 2005107741 A2 entitled “Printing job completion notification system for printing system” relates to a method and system for print job completion notification system. A user sends a printing job for printing to the system of patent publication using email. The system comprises a printer that comprises a printing job interpretation part. The printing job interpretation part receives and interprets the email and identifies the printing job. The printing job interpretation part further extracts an email address from the email. Thereafter, the printing job is executed by the printer. After completion of the print job the user is sent a notification on the email address.
Similarly the patent application JP 2005107837 A2 entitled “Printing job completion notification system” relates to a method and system for print job completion notification system. The system of patent publication comprises a computer system and a printing system. The computer system can be used for creating and sending a printing job. The computer system further adds an identification code along with the printing job. The printing system further comprises a storage device, a printing job interpretation part and a notification processing part. The storage device stores a computer identifier and a corresponding address. The computer identifier can be used for identifying a computer system and a notification destination can be used to send notifications. A user sends a first printing job to the printing system, thereafter, the printing job interpretation part identifies a first computer identifier and a first identification code from the first printing job. After printing of the first printing job, the notification processing part identifies a first notification destination from the storage device using the first computer identifier. Thereafter, a notification is sent to the computer system for completion of the first printing job.
Again, the patent application US 20050094193 A1 entitled “Print driver system and method for print job notification” relates to a method and system for digital document processing. The method comprises accepting a document for printing and thereafter, presenting a user interface for accepting print job commands. The print job commands can, for example, be selection of a printer etc. The method further comprises presenting a user interface for receiving notification commands. The notification commands can, for example, be an email address for receiving notifications. After receiving the notification commands, the document is sent for printing. The method further comprises sending a print job notification. The print job notification can, for example, include printing job completion notification, an error notification etc.
While this approach may lessen the tendency for users to delay recovering their documents, it will not be of any assistance in helping them identify their print job, or ensuring that it is not left for an unduly long period.